




TWO SERMONS TO MEN 


Sowing and Reaping 

and 

You Can’t Beat the 
Game 


By 

BOB JONES 

Evangelist 






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Two Sermons to Men 

Sowing and Reaping 

and 

You Can’t Beat the Game 


BY 

BOB JONES, Evangelist 


Price 25 cents 


Published by 

GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
207 South Wabash Avenue 
Chicago, Illinois 


C V\ 





Bhrm 


Copyright 1923 

GLAD TIDINGS PUBLISHING COMPANY 


©C1A761849 


OCT 30 1923 


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SOWING AND REAPING 


3 


SOWING AND REAPING 

Galatians, 6th chapter, 7th verse: 

“Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for what¬ 
soever a man soweth that (that very thing, not 
any other thing, not something else) shall he also 

reap.” 

Somebody has said, “There are three persons 
whom I cannot deceive: I cannot deceive my God; 
I cannot deceive my neighbor; 1 cannot deceive 
myself.” 

That you cannot deceive God, you ought to 
know. Even your secret thoughts are known to 
Him. There are men here today who have deceived 
their wives, their mothers, their children, and their 
sisters, but they have never for one moment de¬ 
ceived Almighty God. There are men here who 
have managed to go to places so secluded that the 
eyes of loved ones could not see them; but the eyes 
of God have seen them at every step of life’s 
journey. You cannot for one moment deceive 
Almighty God. And listen, men: Sin never looked 
as bad in the eyes of a pure mother as it looks in 
the eyes of Almighty God. His eyes never looked 
upon sin with the least degree of allowance. 

And then, it is true that a man cannot always 
deceive his neighbor. Abraham Lincoln told a 
great truth when he said: “You can fool some of 
the people all the time; you can fool all the people 
some of the time; but you cannot fool all the people 
all the time.” As little as you realize it, you are 
pretty well known by the people among whom you 
live. You know a man cannot be guilty of sin 





4 


SOWING AND REAPING 


for a long time without people suspecting it. They 
may not catch you, but they will suspect you. And 
I have found that when a rumor follows the same 
man wherever that man goes, ninety-nine times out 
of a hundred that man is guilty. They may tell 
one lie about Bob Jones in Wisconsin; they may 
tell another lie about Bob Jones in Indiana; they 
may tell another lie about Bob Jones in Alabama; 
they may tell another lie about Bob Jones in New 
York, but the devil does not tell the same lie about 
the same man everywhere he goes. 

I have been in towns and cities in this country, 
and have had people say to me, “That man is guilty 
of so and so.” “How do you know?** “Well, we 
could not go into court and prove it, but everybody 
knows he is guilty.’’ I have had them say to me, 
“That man is guilty of so and so.’’ They had no 
proof, but there was a general feeling that the man 
was not playing square. 

There is a man here this afternoon who is keep¬ 
ing a woman. He thinks nobody knows it, but 
people are beginning to suspect it. They are say¬ 
ing to themselves, and to each other, “Have you 
seen certain things? Don’t you think there is 
something wrong there?*’ There is a man here 
this afternoon who thinks he is decent. He slips 
off to gamble, and imagines nobody knows. There 
is a man here this afternoon who drinks whiskey, 
and thinks he is able to hide it, but he cannot hide 
it. He may go away from home to drink; he may 
slip into the “blind tiger,*’ but somehow or other, 
people will catch him. As sure as you are here 
today, sin will find the sinner out. You cannot 
deceive your neighbor forever. 




SOWING AND REAPING 


5 


1 here is a sense in which a man cannot deceive 
himself. 

But there is in this world a deceiver—the devil. 

Some people do not believe there is any such per¬ 
son as the devil. I never could understand how 
anybody could tell me that. I know there is a devil 
when I look around America. I find out there is a 
devil in every town I go. Whenever a man tells 
me he does not think there is a devil I know that 
man has never tried to live right. Any man who 
tries to live right finds out there is a devil. The 
devil was once an angel in heaven. He was pos¬ 
sibly the guardian of the throne of God. The devil 
became conceited. He had a case of big-head and 
wanted to run everything, and he was hurled from 
the noonday of heaven to the midnight of earth. 
The devil is not in hell. He is in this town. He 
is in this state. He is in America. He is not in 
hell. That is a lie. The devil is in this world. He 
is prince of the power of the air. Next to God he 
is the wisest being in the universe. I have often 
wondered how it is that the devil, after having 
traversed the distance between heaven and earth 
could still be intelligent. But he is. He has sense. 
He knows all about you. He knows the kind of 
blood you have in your veins. He knows all about 
your family record. He has kept your family tree. 
He can hunt your record back for generations. He 
knows your maternal and paternal grandparents, 
and knows what kind of a weakness you have in 
your nature. He knows whether the drunkard’s 
blood is in your veins or not. He knows whether 
you have the blood of a whoremonger in your 
makeup. He knows the point at which to make 



6 


SOWING AND REAPING 


his attack. The devil is a great general, and he 
always attacks human character at its weakest 
point. 

The devil works in an intelligent manner. He 
always tries hardest to get hold of the man that has 
the most influence. You know there are some men 
who get lower down than the devil wants them to 
go. There are some men who are carried by their 
appetites or passions lower than the devil would 
have them go. Here is what I mean: You need 
not be uneasy that your son will be made a drunk¬ 
ard by the drunkard in the ditch who wallows in 
his filth, who staggers home in the night time and 
curses the ragged wife and hungry children. There 
is not a boy in this town that wants to be like that 
man. But watch out for the man who belongs to 
a swell club, wears nice clothes, holds up his head, 
shines in society, acts like a gentleman, walks 
around and says, “I drink whenever I want to. I 
can take a drink and stop. I have manhood enough 
to quit when I get ready.” That man is the devil’s 
masterpiece. If he were going to make a man to 
order he would not change you an iota. You are 
the kind of a man that can drag to the drunkard’s 
ditch the young manhood of this town. 

Here is what I mean: You need not be uneasy 
about your daughter being ruined by the direct— 
you notice, 1 say direct —influence of that old 
prostitute yonder in her earthly hell. That poor, 
wrecked, ruined, disgraced, fallen creature. There 
is not a girl in this town that would wish to be like 
her. But you watch out for the butterfly of your 
community that sips from life’s sweetest flowers, 
and yet engages in things impure. One crooked, 



SOWING AND REAPING 


7 


impenitent, shadowed society woman can do more 
to damn the girlhood of a town by direct influence 
than all the whores in the whorehouses of America. 
You know the devil wants you to keep a form of 
respectability. He wants you to be decent. He 
wants you to act like a gentleman; to reject Jesus 
Christ and put your influence on the side of sin. 
He would not care much if you would join the 
church, just so you did not live right. If you will 
help him run his business he would not keep you 
out of the church. He wants you to be respectable, 
decent, gentlemanly, have nice manners, have influ¬ 
ence, but keep yourself where you can wield some 
influence for him. 

The devil seldom tells a straight out and out lie. 
He has too much sense. If you were going to 
poison a dog you would give him strychnine in 
meat or bread wouldn’t you } The devil tries to get 
you the same way. You know the devil knows the 
Bible. By the way, did you ever think about it, 
the devil did not tell Adam any lie—in a sense he 
did, but in another sense he did not. He said, 
“Adam, when you eat this fruit your eyes will get 
open.” Well, they did, but they got open too late. 
So, many a man gets his eyes open too late. There 
are men here this afternoon who have got their 
eyes open after their sins have cursed and damned 
their own families. 

The devil quoted scripture to Jesus. The devil 
is familiar with the Bible. You cannot deal with 
the devil without some knowledge of God’s word. 
You will fail if you try, for he knows the Book, 
and no man can cope with him without a working 
knowledge of the Bible. The devil does not come 



8 


SOWING AND REAPING 


and tell straight out lies. 1 heard a man not long 
ago quote the Bible to justify sin. There are some 
people that tell you the Bible is an indecent book. 
They say it is vulgar, and is not nice for children 
to read, but I want to say this to you: You never 
see the Bible in a place of sin and infamy. You 
see bad books, and bad pictures, and hear bad 
stories, but whenever the Bible gets into a haunt 
like that, bad books and bad pictures leave the haunt 
of sin. There is nothing indecent in the Bible, and 
it never condones sin. An old whoremonger told 
me not long ago, when he would do good, evil was 
always present; quoting God’s word in an effort 
to justify his own degeneracy, his own depravity. 

The devil gets hold of public sentiment, too. I 
will illustrate. I was down South in the black belt, 
in an aristocratic town. They can go back ages 
with their ancestors. I was talking about the world¬ 
liness of the town, and I said something about 
dancing. I found out that most of the church mem¬ 
bers in that town danced. A young fellow who 
was a whoremonger, and had syphilis, and I knew 
it (but he did not know I knew it), rushed up to me 
at the close of the service, and said, 

“Oh, you are wrong. I think dancing is all 
right.” 

“Do you?” 

“Yes, I think it is all right.” 

“Then you believe in taking the barriers down 
between the sexes, and you believe in a man hug¬ 
ging a woman whenever he gets ready, no matter 
whose wife she is, or whose daughter, or anything 
about it?” 



SOWING AND REAPING 


9 


“Oh, I don’t mean that,” he said. 

“Then,” said I, “will you tell me how it is that it 
is all right to hug a woman when there is music in 
the room, and it is not right to hug her when there 
is no music about? Will you tell me how a ball 
room and orchestra can make it right for a man to 
hug a woman?” 

Now the devil is the author of all that tommy 
rot. Whoever told you that you had any right to 
hug your neighbor’s wife because there is a band 
playing in the room? 

While you sit in this service this afternoon, in 
houses of sin in America there are thousands of 
fallen women. Think of it! Thousands this hour 
selling their bodies and souls for a few paltry dol¬ 
lars. Thousands of girls kept there by the base 
passions of American men. And let me stop here 
long enough to say that you have some men in this 
town who are “hellions” enough to say that whore¬ 
houses are necessary. This is a democratic coun¬ 
try. If the whorehouses are necessary you ought 
to be willing to furnish some of the women to run 
them. Who do you expect to furnish the women? 
Would you like to have a part in it? Somebody 
must furnish them. You quit saying they are a 
necessity unless you are willing to contribute some 
of your women folks to keep them running. 

Of these thousands of fallen women there are 
many who never would have gone to ruin if it had 
not been for the modern dance. The dance has 
been for years tearing the barriers down between 
the sexes and it is responsible for much of the 
depravity and the looseness and adultery of Amer¬ 
ica. Yonder is a man sitting back there. He is 



10 


SOWING AND REAPING 


an upstart of a fellow. He thinks he knows every¬ 
thing. He thinks the preacher is a crank. He 
thinks I belong to an earlier age than this. He 
says I don’t know what I am talking about. He 
says he dances all the modern dances; never has 
any evil thoughts. Do you mean to tell me you can 
go into a closed room, underneath beautiful lights, 
with the odor of flowers everywhere; with the 
sweetest music floating out on the midnight air; 
with your arm around a beautiful woman with a 
low necked dress on; with a heaving bosom against 
yours, going around in that giddy whirl, and you 
never have an evil thought? Listen: The man that 
says that is one of three things. He is more than 
a man; he is less than a man, or he is an infamous 
liar. 

I gave ray heart to God when I was eleven years 
old. I have been in the ministry since I was fifteen 
years old—and by the way somebody says, “How 
do you know so much about men?” Let me stop 
long enough to tell you how I know about you. I 
know what Bob Jones would be but for the grace 
of God, and I know what you devils are who reject 
Jesus Christ. I know what men are without God 
because I know what I would be. I went into the 
ministry at the age of fifteen. There has never 
been a day of real dissipation in my life (thank 
God), but I want to tell you right now I could not 
dance with your wife, or with your daughter, or 
with your sister, and be a perfect gentleman. If 
you can dance these damnable modern dances with¬ 
out your passions being affected, you should send 
for your family physician. 

You man back there; you father of a daughter; 



SOWING AND REAPING 


11 


listen to me: You go home this afternoon, call your 
daughter in the parlor, and say to her: 

“Daughter, I want to ask you a question.” 

“All right, father, what is it?” 

“Did you ever get on a ball room floor and go 
around in the giddy whirl, and a fellow drew you 
so close you had to push him away?” 

“Yes, father, that has happened a few times. I 
cannot dance that way.” 

What was the matter with the man that squeezed 
your daughter on the ball room floor? You are a 
man. What was the matter with him? Listen: 
While he was dancing with your daughter his pas¬ 
sions caught the fire of hell. Suppose your daugh¬ 
ter does stay pure. Are you going to furnish that 
innocent girl from your household to set on fire the 
base passions of base men? It is not a question 
of the purity of our women, but I protest against 
consecrating womanhood upon an altar to fire the 
base passions of whoremongers, adulterers, and 
wicked men. 

Before I leave that subject let me tell you men 
just this: I have had a little experience in my life. 
I could hardly count the women that have said to 
me, or to my workers, in evangelistic campaigns, 
that they were ruined by the dance. And you do 
not know what kind of a devil is sleeping in the 
blood of your wife, your sister, or your daughter, 
and nobody knows. I have seen girls go from 
pedestals of social honor and purity down to houses 
of sin, and in their disgrace and ruin they have said 
to our workers in revivals, “It was all the dance.” 
If you call the preacher that fights the tendency to 
blight and ruin our women and debauch our men 



12 


SOWING AND REAPING 


a crank, you may do so, but I am God Almighty’s 
crank to help protect our men and our women from 
ruin. 

The devil gets hold of public sentiment. Let me 
see. Where did you ever get the idea to keep your 
women pure, but you men live as you please? 
Whoever said you had any privileges that your wife 
has not, or your sister, or your mother, or your 
daughter? Why do you think it is right for you 
to go to a whorehouse, and wrong for your wife 
to go? Whoever told you it was all right for you 
to sleep with a woman, but it would be bad for 
your sister to sleep with a man? Where did you 
get that idea? Not out of the Bible. God said, 
“Thou shalt not commit adultery.’’ He was talk¬ 
ing to men as much as He was to women. It takes 
a man and a woman to commit adultery. Jesus 
said, “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after 
her hath committed adultery with her already in his 
heart.’’ He was not talking to women; He was 
talking to men. 

I believe in one standard. I think God expects 
me to be as pure as He expects my wife to be. I 
think God expects a man to be as white as He 
expects a woman to be. A sin that will send a 
woman to hell will damn any man in this town. 

Let me give you a picture. Here is a woman 
that walks your streets, friendless; a fallen woman. 
You say, “Don’t have anything to do with Miss 
Blank. She has gone to the bad.’* You say to 
your sister, “Don’t speak to Miss Blank. She has 
gone wrong.’’ You say to your wife, “Don’t 
speak to her. You know there is a scandal about 
her.” 




SOWING AND REAPING 


13 


Here is a man who walks around town; drinks 
whiskey; goes to the city, and into a whorehouse 
whenever he gets ready; tells dirty jokes; swears; 
gambles; does anything he wants to. He comes 
to your home, and takes your daughter to dances. 
He goes with her to the theatre. He comes and 
sits down in your parlor, and goes to your family 
table, and you respect him. You say, “Oh, he is 
a man.” Yes—and he ruined that woman to whom 
you and your family will not speak. I have as 
much respect for a whore as I have for a whore¬ 
monger. I have as much respect for that prostitute 
in the house of ill fame as I have for the dirty 
scoundrel in society who goes and sleeps with her 
in her sin. 

Yonder is a young fellow. He has as nice a 
mother as anybody ever had; pure as an angel; 
loves him with a heart almost breaking. Whenever 
he goes out at night she never sleeps until he comes 
home. She stays awake sometimes to pray for him. 
He remembers the other night when he went away 
to a place of sin and satisfied his passion and came 
back home. His mother said “Son, your room is 
fixed; everything is ready.” He went and crawled 
with all his filth into that bed that his mother had 
smoothed out with her own pure hands, and he 
slept without even a pain in his heart, with no sense 
of remorse, and never thought that he had done 
anything that was not all right. Do you know what 
I would do? I would either live a white, clean, 
straight, pure life, or I would not ask my mother 
to keep company with me. I would not ask my 
mother to keep company with a whoremonger, and 
that is what you are. She fixes the bed with her 




14 


SOWING AND REAPING 


own hands in which you sleep, and you, a low lived 
devil, think you are a gentleman! 

Let me give you another picture. Here is a man. 
A few years ago he married as lovely a woman as 
God ever gave to man. You remember it. You 
walked down the aisle of the church, and the dain¬ 
tiest little hand was on your arm. You stood in 
the presence of the minister of the Gospel, and he 
asked you if you would take that woman for your 
wedded wife. He asked if you would love her! if 
you would protect her! if you would forsake all 
others, and keep her only unto yourself so long as 
you both should live, and you said, “1 will.” Her 
heart leaped in her bosom. She believed every 
word of it, and all these years she has been tried 
and true. She has suffered for you; she has looked 
out for your interests; she has followed you with 
her love. Not long ago you went away from home, 
and got in bed with another woman and satisfied 
your base passions. You came from that bed of 
infamy, home, and met your wife, and you had the 
audacity to put a kiss upon her lips, when your lips 
were stained with the kiss of another woman. You 
talk to me about hell! If God had never made a 
hell for anyone else; if He is just, He will stop now 
and start an eternal fire in which to damn you, you 
infamous deceiver of a pure woman. Talk about 
hell! Hell is too good for you, sir. 

But I am reminded that men are constituted dif¬ 
ferently from women; and some quack doctors 
have said a man cannot be pure. Some of you 
have that idea in your head. I remember I was 
down in Mississippi several years ago, taking a little 
rest. I was sitting at the table when a young fellow 



15 


SOWING AND REAPING 


touched me on the shoulder and said, “I would like 
to see you on the gallery.** 1 walked out on the 
gallery with the young fellow, and he said: 

“Do you remember so and so?** 

“Yes,** I replied. 

“Do you remember,’* he said, “I was converted 
in a certain Louisiana town?*’ 

“Yes, I remember it. How are you getting 
along?*’ 

“I have been straight ever since.’’ 

“That is bully. I am glad to hear it.*’ 

“But,** he said, “I am fighting the devil now. 
You remember Doctor Blank?’’ 

“Yes, what about him?’’ 

“He is a relative of mine, and he says I must run 
after women or be a nervous wreck. What do you 
think about it?’* 

“He is a dirty liar, that is what I think about it,’* 
I said. “Listen,** I said, “God never made a law but 
that the keeping of that law means physical, mental 
and moral strength. No man’s nervous system was 
ever shattered by keeping the law of God. More; 
every reputable physician alive will tell you that a 
man can be as pure as a woman.’’ (They don’t 
have to tell some of us, thank God, we have tried.) 
It’s a man’s job, and you are supposed to be a man. 
(If you are not a man you have no business in this 
service, for it is for men only.) A man, backed by 
the grace of God, can be as pure as a woman. I 
have a boy at home. When he grows up to young 
manhood, if some infamous quack should get 
around behind the corner somewhere and tell that 
boy he could not live pure I would take that man 





16 


SOWING AND REAPING 


by the nape of the neck and put this foot on his 
western hemisphere and send him out of town. 

“Be not deceived: God is not mocked; for what¬ 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” 

I want to call attention to four striking sins of 
men that have been striking sins of men during the 
years gone by. I want to show you how our dis¬ 
sipation got us into trouble, and I want to show 
you how we are reaping a harvest of trouble as the 
result of sowing seeds through generations gone by. 

The first sin I call attention to is the sin of pro¬ 
fanity. If I can hear a man talk I can tell you 
what he is. I can meet any man in this town, and 
talk to him fifteen minutes, and nine times out of 
ten I can tell you that man’s business. How can I 
tell it? If he is a lawyer, unconsciously he will use 
a legal term; if a doctor, unconsciously a medical 
term; if a preacher, unconsciously a theological 
term; if a farmer, unconsciously a term that belongs 
to his business. “From the abundance of the heart 
the mouth speaketh.” A man’s words betray the 
trend of his mind. 

Yonder is a man that tells dirty jokes. He says 
those dirty jokes come from his lips. It is a lie. 
There never was a dirty joke that was bred upon 
human lips that did not have birth in the heart. 
If you let me hear the jokes you tell I will show 
you the color of your character. You know this 
is the day of dirty joke telling. Men even tell dirty 
jokes about the apostles and about the Bible, and 
about holy things. They make jokes out of 
motherhood. 

Going through Florida some months ago I was 
sitting beside a man, talking to him. I looked out 




SOWING AND REAPING 


17 


at a simple cabin home near the railroad, and saw 
a plain country woman out about her cow lot. 
Two or three little children were following her, 
and she was soon to become a mother. That in¬ 
famous man, by whose side I sat, got off a joke 
about motherhood. In a few moments I saw a 
little girl come bounding into the car. She threw 
her arms around her father and said, “Papa, 
mamma wants to see you.“ I looked into his 
filth}', wicked, mean, wretched face, and I said 
in my heart, “You are too filthy and too indecent to 
be touched by the hands of a little child. Your 
words betray you.” 

A man has gone to mighty low depths that can 
make a joke out of motherhood. A man has 
reached bottom who can tell vile jokes that involve 
the sexes. Any man in this town who will stand 
on the street corner and tell smutty jokes that in¬ 
volve the sexes, and drag pure womanhood into his 
filthy words, will ruin a woman if he is tempted. 
I would not trust any man I ever saw that delights 
in telling dirty jokes which drag the purity of 
womanhood into his speech. The root of devil¬ 
ment is in his nature. A man’s jokes betray his 
character. And you have never told a joke any 
filthier than your soul or any more vile than the 
heart from which that joke came. 

You have the sin of profanity. You have a man 
here this afternoon who will swear in his home in 
the presence of his little boy. Your boy has heard 
you “cuss” a thousand times. He is learning to 
“cuss” from you. You “cussing” father back 
there; you go home this afternoon, take your little 
boy on your knee and say: 



18 


SOWING AND REAPING 


“Son, who is the best man in town?” If you 
ask him who he would rather talk like than any¬ 
body, he will say he would rather talk like his papa 
than anybody. Then take your wife out and say 
to her: 

“How would you like for the boy to talk like 
me?" There are men here that swear in the pres¬ 
ence of their own wives, even at their own tables. 
You would not swear in the presence of your neigh¬ 
bor’s wife. Have you less respect for the woman 
that presides at your table than you have for the 
woman that presides at your neighbor’s table? God 
pity the woman that is tied up to a swearing 
husband. 

Down in Georgia there is a lady of whom I have 
heard. Her husband was a notorious swearer. He 
used to come home and swear and she got tired of 
it—all nice women do. She made up her mind she 
was going to break him of the habit and if she could 
not do it by prayer she would use another method. 
One day he came in and swore, and she swore back 
at him. He looked at her. He went for a day or 
two, and he swore another oath, and she swore 
back at him. Again he looked at her. He went 
on for a week or two, and he decided to swear an 
oath. She swore back. He looked at her. One 
day he came in and said to her: 

“I have been thinking it over and I would like 
to make a little proposition to you.** 

“What is it?** 

“I will quit ‘cussing* if you will.’* 

There are women in this town who have heard 
their husbands swear until they don’t expect any- 



SOWING AND REAPING 


19 


thing else. They have associated you with pro¬ 
fanity. Your very presence means vile oaths; your 
very presence means swearing, and all she expects 
when you come home is to hear you sit down and 
pour out the filth of your depraved heart. 

God wrote the commandments, and He put down 
there: 

“Thou shalt not kill” and stopped. 

He put down there ‘‘Thou shalt not steal,” and 
stopped. 

He put down there “Thou shalt not commit adul¬ 
tery,” and He stopped. 

He wrote, ‘‘Thou shalt not take the name of the 
Lord, thy God, in vain,” and then said, “I want to 
write a comment after that: *1 will not hold him 
guiltless that taketh my name in vain.’ ” 

If that commandment was of enough importance 
for Almighty God to write a comment about it, you 
had better never dare to have the audacity to take 
that holy name in vain upon your vile, unholy lips. 

For a long time I have been trying to find a 
chronic swearer who did not reap the harvest of his 
own oaths. I have never found one. I have seen 
a man swear for years, and seem to prosper, but if 
I had waited long enough to find out, those oaths 
that went from his lips would go out yonder some¬ 
where and gather into a cloud of curses, and come 
back and break with a violent storm upon his own 
head. The curse of Almighty God rests upon every 
man that dares to take that holy name in vain, and 
the mark of heaven is upon you. You will get 
your harvest of curses, for whatsoever a man 






20 


SOWING AND REAPING 


sows, that very thing somehow or other, he is going 
to reap. 

I call your attention to another sin: the sin of 
gambling. 

Any man in this town who gambles to get the 
money will steal. I want to say that over again. 
Any man in this town who gambles to get money 
will steal. The gambler says, “I want something 
for nothing.** 

The thief says, **You old fool, get out of my 
way. That is my business.” 

The gambler says, “I want money without work. 

The theif says, ”Get out of my way, you old fool, 
that has been my job all the time.” 

You man back there; you low down gambler, 
you are a twin brother to a thief. If you resent 
such a statement I will know who gambles in this 
town. 

Let us see a moment. “Mr. Merchant, I have a 
gambler I want you to employ.” 

“Oh, I cannot hire a gambler,” says the Merchant. 

“Why Mr. Merchant?*’ 

“He will steal when he is tempted.” 

“Mr. Banker, I want you to employ a gambler.” 

“I cannot hire a gambler.” 

“But, Mr. Banker, he is the best banker in the 
country.” 

“I do not want a gambler in my business.” 

“What is the matter, Mr. Banker?” 

“A gambler is a thief when he is tempted.” 

*'Gentlemen, there is a gambler in this town that 



SOWING AND REAPING 


21 


can take your money and make you twenty per¬ 
cent on it. Will you let him have it?” 

“No, sir, I cannot trust that man with my 
money.” 

“Why, gentlemen?” 

“A gambler will steal when he is tempted.” 

There is not a thinking man in this country who 
will trust a low down, dirty gambler, for every man 
who thinks, knows a gambler is a thief. 

Suppose I should go to New York tomorrow, and 
steal fifty dollars, and they should put me in jail. 
Gentlemen, 1 can see the papers next day. You 
know, if a preacher wants to get famous, let him 
do some devilment, and have them write him up. 
They would call me “Doctor” day after tomorrow. 
They would say: 

“The Reverend Doctor Jones, the most famous 
evangelist in America; the greatest preacher the 
world ever produced,” and have it in big headlines 
on the first page. The Associated press would send 
the wire out and the papers would say there never 
was such a preacher as Bob Jones. He was a most 
marvelous fellow. He had great meetings, and is 
in jail for stealing fifty dollars. I can see the paper 
now. I can see some of the headlines. You who 
have been “cussing” me back there; who have been 
saying I am causing trouble, would go on the street 
with the paper in your hand, and say: 

“Have you heard the news. That fellow that 
has been up at the tabernacle preaching and raising 
the devil has been in New York, and has stolen fifty 
dollars.” 

“I hope they will keep the cuss in jail the rest of 




22 


SOWING AND REAPING 


his life. 1 knew he was a crook,” your old bum 
friend would say. 

You take one of your black leg gamblers in this 
town. Let him steal fifty dollars. Put him in jail, 
and the papers will come out, but they will not call 
him Mister. (We ought not to call gamblers Mis¬ 
ter. They are not entitled to it.) There will be a 
little notice saying so and so came to New York 
and stole fifty dollars, and is in jail, and everybody 
takes it as a matter of course. His friends will see 
the paper and say: 

“Have you heard about Dick?” 

“No, what is the matter with him?” 

“Dick is in New York in jail for stealing fifty 
dollars,” his old pals will say. 

“He is too bold about it. 1 have seen him play 
poker, and I have told him a half dozen times he 
was going to get it.” 

Every gambler at heart knows that a gambler is 
a thief. They watch each other, and if a strange 
gambler comes to town and they play with him, 
they take their guns to protect themselves, and they 
watch him, because they know they are dealing 
with a thief. A gambler is a thief. He ought to 
be wearing the stripes of a convict. I would rather 
have half a dozen thieves in my town today than 
half a dozen gamblers. The thieves will get your 
money, but the gamblers will get your money and 
your character. All the low down, dirty gamblers 
in this town ought to be sent to the pen, and ought 
to be kept there for life, if they will not repent. 

There are lots of men in this country that do not 
play poker, but they gamble. The man that makes 



SOWING AND REAPING 


23 


money dishonestly by any sort of method has, in 
my opinion, the heart of a thief. I imagine it is 
a terrible thing to be dishonest. Somebody has said: 
“A man with one dollar in his pocket, if it is an 
honest dollar, can go to bed at night, and hang his 
breeches up by his bed, and soon that dollar will 
turn to a nightingale and sing him to sleep.” 

1 have some clippings in my possession taken 
from one of the papers of a town where we held a 
revival meeting. They had a conscience fund in 
that town. Everybody in that country that had 
ever stolen anything, or got money dishonestly, 
sent it in. One day a man got money from two 
different people; one just signed, ‘‘Yours truly,” 
and sent him a bill; another signed, ‘‘This belongs 
to you.” I am not surprised. I tell you, men, a 
man that knows he has something that does not 
belong to him, never can be happy. 

A gambler gets his harvest. Does he always 
lose? Not always. But he will get his harvest 
anyhow. You can go to the home of a dishonest 
man in this town. It may be the most magnificent 
home in the city, but keep looking, and after a 
while you will find somewhere a skeleton more 
hideous than hell, for the curse of God rests upon 
the head of every man who holds a dishonest dollar. 
I tell you, I would rather live on bread and water 
and know it is mine! 1 would rather live in a cabin 
and know I was an honest man, than to revel in 
luxury for a few years with the curse that rests 
upon the head of the man who is dishonest. 

I call your attention to another sin; the sin of 
drinking liquor. Some of you fellows know lots 
more about that than I do. Some of you have had 



24 


SOWING AND REAPING 


experience already with the breaking head; the 
burned up stomach, and the shattered nervous sys¬ 
tem; you know all about it. I heard of a man who 
had been on a spree for a week, and went into a 
town in the old saloon days, arriving there Saturday 
night. He was a traveling man, and woke up Sun¬ 
day morning at the hotel nearly dead. He said, I 
must have something; I cannot live through the 
day without it.” He drank two or three pitchers 
of ice water, but that did not help him. (By the 
way, there was a woman who said her husband did 
not drink liquor because he drank so much cold 
water early in the morning.) This fellow got up 
early and went to a saloon, but they had a sign 
over the door, ‘‘Closed on Sunday.” This fellow 
could not get into the front door, and he thought 
he would go to the back and see if he couldn’t get 
in there. But they had a sign up over the back 
door, ‘‘Sunday, closed.” He stood there cursing 
Sunday; said it interfered with his personal liberty; 
said everybody that wanted to could go to church, 
but that he did not want to go to church; he would 
die before Sunday was over anyway. By and by 
the Salvation Army passed, singing, ‘‘Every Day 
Will Be Sunday By and By,” and the fellow fell 
dead. 

Down in the pine woods of the South there was 
a fellow who in the old saloon days got on a spree 
and started home, going through the woods. He 
came to a place where the hogs had rooted up a 
great big bed of straw, and as it felt warm he just 
lay down and went to sleep. He had been accus¬ 
tomed to sleeping with his brother Bill, and when 
he rolled over and touched something he said, 






SOWING AND REAPING 


25 


“Bill, I wish you would get a little further over. 
You don’t feel like you have had a shave in a 
month.” The hog jumped up and ran off, and then 
he said, “You needn’t be running off; 1 am just as 
much of a gentleman as you are.” 

Before prohibition I went through the medical 
department of Tulane University in New Orleans, 
and a friend of mine said: 

“1 want to take you through the dissecting 
room.” 

“All right,” I said. 

We went into the dissecting room, and he said: 

“Did you ever see a drunkard’s brain?” 

“A drunkard’s what?” 

“A drunkard has a brain; did you ever see it?” 

“No,” I said, “I never did.” 

“You ought to see one. Here in the dissecting 
room when they bring these old topers in, we can 
tell a drunkard by examining his brain, and you 
ought to see the effect of liquor on the human 
brain.” 

“Did you ever see a drunkard’s stomach,” he 
asked. 

“No, but I knew that every drunkard had a 
stomach.” 

1 stood there, and I said, “Think of America 
running establishments where men can drink stuff 
that will burn their stomachs out, and will drink 
that stuff that will harden the human brain, and 
drive them insane, and make epileptics out of their 
children, and produce insanity.” 

Think of it! America permitting in this civilized 




26 


SOWING AND REAPING 


day an institution to run where men go and spend 
their money and buy the stuff that will do all that 
business. And then I said to myself, What a fool 
the fellow is that will drink it, pour into his stomach 
something that will burn him; take into his stomach 
something that will harden his brain.” And yet 
men up and down this country cry out for personal 
liberty—liberty to burn their stomachs; liberty to 
harden their brains; liberty to damn their souls; 
liberty to wreck and ruin human homes and crush 
human hearts. 

The man who says there is more liquor being sold 
and drunk today than ever before is both a fool 
and a liar. A friend told me about a friend of his 
who was on a fast transcontinental train, running 
from Chicago to the Pacific coast. This gentleman 
was sitting back in the observation car with a group 
of men when one of them made the statement that 
three out of every four men were either making 
liquor in their own home or buying it from the 
bootlegger. 

“That is a very broad statement,” said this friend 
of mine. 

“It is the truth, nevertheless,” replied the man. 

“I think,” said my friend, “we have gathered here 
in this car a fairly representative group of men, 
from almost every walk of life. Let’s see how the 
thing averages up.” He turned to the man who 
had been speaking, and said: 

“Now just between us, and there is nobody to 
check us up, do you make liquor in your home?” 

“No, sir, I do not,” said the man. My friend 
turned to the next man and asked him, “Do you 
make liquor in your home?” The man gave him 




SOWING AND REAPING 


27 


the same answer. My friend went the rounds of 
the circle, and not a man in that company but who 
stated that they did not, and never had made liquor 
in their home. Several of them admitted that they 
had been drinking men in the past when the saloons 
were in operation, but had given it up when pro¬ 
hibition came into effect. My friend finally turned 
to the old conductor who was sitting silently by, 
and asked him the same question. The conductor 
said: 

“When they tell you there is more drinking and 
drunkenness now than ever before, you tell them 
for me they don’t know what they are talking about. 

I have been taking a train out of Chicago for seven¬ 
teen years. In the old saloon days there was seldom 
a train that I did not have from one to a dozen 
drunks to carry. Now it is a very rare thing for me 
to see a drunk on my train.’’ 

It is to the interest of the liquor traffic to spread 
th© impression abroad that there is more drinking 
than ever before. 

Commissioner Hanes, head of the dry forces in 
America, in speaking to a mass meeting at Chatta¬ 
nooga, Tennessee, said that a great deal of the 
propaganda that is being disseminated through the 
country is “wet*’ propaganda, and that a great deal 
of the stuff we see in the papers today about the 
repeal of the Volstead law is paid for by wet 
England and France. 'Wet France and England 
cannot compete with “dry’’ America. TTiey realize 
this, and are doing everything in their power to 
overthrow prohibition. ^ ... 

“But.** you say, “as long as liquor is made it will 
be sold.** I will assent to the truth of that state- 



28 


SOWING AND REAPING 


ment. As long as liquor is made, undoubtedly there 
will be some men who will drink it. But on the 
other hand, as long as there is an honest dollar in 
the world, some thief stands ready to steal that 
dollar; as long as there is a pure, sweet girl in the 
world, some degenerate stands ready to rob that 
girl of that priceless thing, virtue. There is a law 
against thievery; against seduction; and against 
murder, but there are men low enough to commit 
these dastardly crimes. I will assent to the truth 
of this, but blessed be God, I never have, and I 
never will consent to it, for if I consent to it the 
law says I am equally guilty with the man who stole 
the dollar; seduced that girl, or fired the pistol that 
sent another soul to the throne of God. 

For the bootlegger who operates a still in the 
mountains, and brings his contraband liquor to 
trade in some doorway or back in some blind tiger 
or alley, I have the utmost contempt, and he is 
deserving the utmost penalty the law can inflict 
upon him, but as between the bootlegger, the man 
who makes it, and the respectable, “law abiding” 
club man who buys it and drinks it, I think the 
bootlegger is the better of the two. If it were not 
for the so-called respectable man, the bootlegger 
would have no market for his goods. The man 
who, perchance, may be a member of the church; 
and if so, the greater the shame, and the disgrace, 
buys whiskey from the bootlegger, is doing more 
to offset the influence of the eighteenth amendment 
than all the bootleggers in the country. 

“But I don’t like prohibition.” In the name of 
heaven, what has that got to do with it? Some 
people don’t like penitentiaries either, but we have 



SOWING AND REAPING 


29 


them in almost every state. Who are you to set 
yourself up to criticize the land that gave you birth; 
a country where the foundations were laid by the 
bleeding hands of our fathers, and a country to 
which you owe every drop of your blood? The 
eighteenth amendment is a fact; not a supposition; 
not a theory, but a fact, and the man who drinks 
is breaking the law, and I am saying to you he is a 
traitor to the flag under which he lives. That atti¬ 
tude is a breeder of anarchy. The respectable man 
says: “To hell with the prohibition law.’* The 
anarchist says: “To hell with all law, and to hell 
with you with the law." 

I haven’t a word to say in closing that will make 
anybody smile. There is nothing to smile about. 
I am going to speak modestly and plainly. I want 
to talk to you about a sin that is damning and ruin¬ 
ing America; possibly in some ways the greatest 
sin that is cursing us today, take it all over the 
country. I am speaking of the sin of adultery. I 
have said numbers and numbers of times that the 
sin in this country today that has our people by the 
throat; that is cursing us in every section to such 
an awful extent, is the sin of adultery. And there 
is such an awful harvest we have been reaping from 
this sowing, to which I want to call your attention. 

You hear people talk about the fight against 
tuberculosis. You hear people talk about the fight 
to put yellow fever out of Latin America, and you 
hear people talk about this fight, and that fight, and 
the other fight for reform; but I want to tell you 
right now, there is a greater enemy than any of 
these as a result of our sin of adultery. It is our 
tremendous battle against venereal disease. 



30 


SOWING AND REAPING 


Down South a prominent physician sent to me 
not long ago a book with an article marked. The 
story is this: 

A young lawyer married a beautiful girl, just out 
of college, and they went away on a trip. They 
came back home in a few weeks, and she was all 
fagged out. They thought she was all worn out 
from traveling, and from shock and excitement of 
those early married days. She went to bed. In a 
day or two the doctor came and kept coming, and 
every day he came he grew more serious. Then 
the doctor came one day and said, “I want Doctor 
Blank to consult with me.” During the consulta¬ 
tion they decided it was a case of abdominal preg¬ 
nancy. They operated, and found they were mis¬ 
taken in their diagnosis. They got the microscope, 
and found gonococci, the germs of gonorrhoea. 
They took out all of her organs. One of the doctors 
took her husband aside and said to him: 

“Did you ever have gonorrhoea?” 

“Five years ago I had a mild case, but nothing 
serious,” he said. “I took treatment. I am well.” 

They examined him with the microscope and 
found he still had gonorrhoea. The roses never 
bloomed in the cheeks of that young bride, and the 
luster never came back to the eye, and no little 
baby ever blessed that home. Listen: One little 
night of wicked dissipation plucked the roses from 
those cheeks; snatched the light from those eyes; 
took the joy of a mother’s heart out of the bosom 
of that woman. And yet you have men here today 
that will dare to make light of sin. You hear 
people talk about little sin. Men, there is no little 




SOWING AND REAPING 


31 


sin, and don’t you dare ever to make light of sin, 
for sin brings its curse. 

Did you know that fifty times out of one hun¬ 
dred when a baby is born blind it is because its 
parents had gonorrhoea? Did you know that fifty 
times out of one hundred when a married couple 
cannot have children it is because the husband has 
had gonorrhoea? There is many a woman that 
walks the streets of our towns and cities in America 
with her heart breaking in the longing for a baby. 
People think she is barren, and she thinks she is 
* barren, but that is not true. She married a man 
who had made light of sin, and he had reaped his 
harvest of gonorrhoea. I am giving you the mini¬ 
mum. Ask any doctor in this town. If he will, 
he can tell you that Bob Jones was too conserva¬ 
tive. Seventy times out of one hundred when a 
married woman is operated on for female trouble, 
it is because she married a man that had gonorrhoea. 
Seven times out of ten when a married woman from 
this town is taken away to some institution and 
operated on for female trouble, if the doctor would 
use his microscope he could find gonorrhoea. That 
is the lowest estimate. There is many a woman in 
this country, loyal and true, to her husband, whose 
physical body has been racked and ruined and 
cursed because he made light of sin. 

I was speaking some months ago in a coast town 
in Florida, and while I was talking along this line, 
a preacher friend of mine whom I had known all 
my life, wept as I talked. When I was through 
with my message he said: 

“I want to see you.” 

“All right,” I said, “come to the hotel.” 




32 


SOWING AND REAPING 


“Bob, ’ he said as he put his hand on my shoulder, 
“my heart is breaking.” 

“What is the matter with you?” I said. 

“You know when I was a boy I used to be wild.” 

“I remember,” said I. 

“You know I was fast.” 

“Yes, I remember.” 

“You know I had gonorrhoea.” 

“Yes, I believe you told me so. What is the 
matter?” 

“My wife has been under the surgeon’s knife 
three times, and is a nervous and physical wreck. 
I knew I had really never gotten well, but I never 
knew before today that I had sent my wife under 
that anesthetic; that I had put her on the operating 
table! that I had been responsible for the movement 
of the surgeon’s knife that removed those organs.” 

Oh, young men, do not make light of sin. Sin 
will curse you. Sin will curse the woman you 
marry. Sin will curse that child unborn. Sin, sin, 
sin will damn your soul. Don’t you ever make 
light of sin. 

If the doctors of this town could only tell all 
they know! I remember talking along this line one 
day, and there was a man sitting down in front of 
me weeping bitterly as I talked. He was the most 
prominent citizen of that town; the solidest man 
in the community. When we were through I 
walked out with a doctor friend of mine. He 
slipped his arm around me and said: 

“Did you notice that man weeping?” 

“Yes, what is the matter, doctor?” 





SOWING AND REAPING 


33 


“I just wanted to ask you if you noticed him 
weeping,” he said. 

Someone told me a day or two later that while I 
was standing there talking this man’s wife was in 
the hospital. She was operated on. And they told 
me that when he was a young man he was the most 
dissipated man in the country. 

Oh sin I Men, you can talk to me about hell fire; 
you can talk to me about burning brimstone; but if 
I had to go home and watch my wife’s face pinched 
and drawn; if I had to see her eyes droop; if I had 
to notice her with a nervous hand; if I had to hear 
her talk about a breaking head and aching back, 
and I knew my sin had cursed her, I would carry 
a little hell in my bosom that would burn like brim¬ 
stone brought from the lake of fire. Sin—sin with 
its curses. Don’t you ever make light of sin. 
There are some men here this afternoon that have 
had the harvest. They have seen. They know. 
I am not talking to you about the bye and bye 
either. I am not talking to you about the harvest 
to come. 1 am not talking about the hell of brim¬ 
stone. I have been talking to you about the hell of 
now, and you men have been there, some of you, 
and you know. 

Some years ago, aboard a railroad train between 
Meridian, Mississippi, and Selma, Alabama, I was 
standing on the rear platform of the train. I 
watched a negro who had jumped from the train 
when it was running about twenty miles an hour. 
All at once I noticed a young fellow standing by 
my side. As the train pulled on down the road he 
turned around and said: 

“I wish to God I was dead and in hell.” 



34 


SOWING AND REAPING 


“What’s the matter?’’ I said. 

“I wish I was dead and in hell,’* he repeated. 

I thought he was insane. I got hold of his arm 
and said: 

“What is the matter? Come on inside and sit 
down and tell me your trouble.’’ 

“I have been out west playing baseball. I belong 
to a certain league,’’ he said. “My mother did not 
want me to go. We live in a certain town, and my 
father is a great churchman, a good Christian man, 
and my mother is a good Christian, too. They did 
not like the baseball life; did not want me to go. 
I went anyhow. I went out with the boys one 
night; went into a whorehouse. The first night I 
was ever in a whorehouse I caught syphilis, and 
then I went to Hot Springs for a while, thinking it 
would cure me. I have taken mercury enough to 
kill a dozen men. The doctor says I have one of 
those stubborn cases, and I want to die.’’ 

He pulled off his cap, and I looked into the finest 
eyes I ever saw, and the most magnificent forehead. 
He ran his hand through his hair and pulled out a 
handful, and said: 

“Look here.’* 

Then I laid my hand on his shoulder and said: 

“You must eat dinner with me in Selma.” 

God bless the fallen man. I don’t care which 
way he goes I want to help him. I never saw a 
man with a broken heart that I did not want to put 
my arms around him and help him out of trouble. 
Oh, man in trouble today, Bob Jones is your friend. 
God bless the man who is down and out; the fellow 



SOWING AND REAPING 


35 


that is harvesting the curses; the fellow that is in 
awful ruin. This fellow said: 

“I am not fit to eat with you.*’ 

“Yes, you are,” I said; “you will take dinner with 
me today. Never mind, I want to talk to you.” 

I took him to Selma. I went up to the hotel and 
he talked with me, and went into dinner with me. 
I talked to him about his soul. I tried to get his 
mind away from his trouble. After dinner we 
walked down to the train, and he said: 

“Mr. Jones, there is one little thing I did not tell 
you.” 

“What is that?” I asked. 

“You know I am engaged to be married in two 
months, and I am not fit to touch the tips of her 
fingers. I do not know what to do. I don’t know 
what to tell her. I cannot marry her.” He turned 
those eyes to mine, and they were just swimming 
in tears, as he said: 

“If you pray for me will it do me any good?” 

“I do not think my prayer will cure you, but you 
are a man; you are young. Go home; put your¬ 
self into the hands of the family doctor. Don’t 
fool with the advertising quack. Go to see a quali¬ 
fied, trustworthy man who is not too broad in his 
claims, and stick to him two years, three years, and 
longer, if necessary. You can get well. Put off 
your wedding. Find some way out. Live for God, 
and be a man. Don’t go around this country like 
a child.” 

We got down to the train. It was almost time 
for him to get aboard. He said: 

“I thank you very much, Mr. Jones. You have 




36 


SOWING AND REAPING 


been very kind. You have helped me a great deal. 
1 have enjoyed so much being with you, and when I 
go home, if I don’t commit suicide, I am going to 
write you.” 

“You are not going to commit suicide. You 
don’t get on that train until you tell me you will 
not. Give me your word.” 

”1 can’t promise,” he said. 

“Don’t get on that train. I am not going to let 
you get on. Stay with me.” 

“Mr. Jones, I must get on that train. My train is 
going. I must get aboard.” 

I followed him up to the side of the train while 
he stepped on; took his hand and begged him to say 
that he would not. He said: 

“I cannot do that. I will write.” 

I did not hear from him. Some weeks later I 
met a fellow who said: 

“I knew that chap. He came home for a few 
days; moped around, and finally went out in a 
lonely grove, took a gun and blew out his brains.” 

Oh, man, don’t you make light of sin. You can 
blot out God, and blot out heaven, and blot out 
hell, and let this world be all, and it will still pay to 
live a white life. 

I like to be clean. Oh, don’t talk to me about 
sin. I like to sleep at night with a clean conscience. 
Men, let us live right. That is all Bob Jones is 
trying to get you to do in this town is to live right. 
I have to live right when I think of my mother. 
My mother, who belonged to the old school. My 
dear old time country mother. I can see her now, 
when she kissed me goodbye as I went to the school 




SOWING AND REAPING 


37 


in the morning, and kissed me when I came home in 
the evening. I can hear her voice again telling me 
to be a good boy. I remember when she died, and 
I held her hand, and told her goodbye, and promised 
to meet her in heaven, and I remember how I have 
been out in the cemetery and knelt by her grave, 
and prayed until the twilight shadows would gather, 
and the stars come out of the evening sky, and I 
said: 

“O, God, I had a good mother. Help me to be 
good. It is not easy to be good. This is a world 
of temptation. There are a thousand battles every 
day. But, O God, help me to be pure.” 

I am going to close quickly. I want to tell you 
a story, and I think it will bring memories home to 
some of you. 

It is said, that during the civil war, on a certain 
battlefield a boy fell. They sent his mother word 
to come, and she came. She got to the hospital; 
the doctor met her, and said: 

“Madam, you cannot see him now. If you go 
in there you will shock him. He is going through 
the crisis. We will try to save him, but if you 
shock him he will die. Wait till morning.” 

“I don’t know how I can wait, doctor, and I do 
not think I would shock him.” 

“But,” said the doctor, “you must not see him, 
madam. Wait until morning.” 

They put her in a room, and all night she walked 
and prayed, and she heard him talking in his de¬ 
lirium. She thought morning would never come, 
and then she thought the doctor would never get 




38 


SOWING AND REAPING 


there. After a while the doctor came, and went 
into the room, and came out. She said: 

“I can see him now?’’ 

“No, madam, no, the crisis is not over. Wait 
until afternoon. We must try to save him. If 
you shock him he will die.’’ 

The doctor went away, and the nurse went out. 
This mother went tripping in as light as a kitten— 
nobody could ever walk as lightly about a boy’s 
sick bed as a mother. She walked up to the bed¬ 
side, reached over and put her hand on his head, 
and he said: 

“Oh, nurse, that feels like my mother’s hand. 
That is the way my mother used to rub my head, 
and that is what I wanted all night. Now I am 
going to sleep. If you had done that last night I 
could have rested. That is just the way mother 
used to do. That feels like mother’s hand, nurse, 
and 1 am going to sleep,’’ and he fell asleep. 

Two hours went by; the crisis was gone, and he 
opened his eyes and said: 

“Oh, my mother.’’ 

Man, man, was there ever a tender hand like 
that on your head? If so, in the name of God, live 
right. 

When I think of Jesus Christ, the Man of Galilee, 
the Christ of Glory, I must live right. Oh, God, 
help us to live right! 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


39 


YOU CANT BEAT THE 
GAME 

My text this afternoon is in Numbers; the thirty- 
second chapter, and the twenty-third verse: 

You can’t do wrong and get away with it. You 
didn’t know that was in the Bible, did you? Well, 
it is. It is not in the Bible in just those words, but 
that is what it means. The Bible says: 

“Be sure your sins will find you out.” It means, 
you can’t clo wrong and get away with it. In other 
words, you can’t beat the sin game. 

“Be sure your sin will find }'ou out.” That is 
no philosophical aphorism; no idle threatening. 
Those are the words of divine inspiration, clothed 
with the garments of eternal truth, and backed by 
the arm of inexorable justice. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.” Apply 
this text where you will, it alwa}'s comes true. It 
comes true in the life of a nation. No nation has 
ever beat the game of sin. The fall of empires and 
the decay of the republics of the past prove the 
truth of this text. 

The excavators are digging out of the earth, and 
are bringing to our attention in this day the story 
of the civilizations of the past. These discoveries 
tell the story of wealth, culture, sensuality, sin, and 
ruin. Babylon, Greece, Rome and other nations 
tried to beat the game of sin, but sin won. 

Some people talk as if they thought America 
might win, though other nations lost. Listen; God 
is under no obligations to America unless America 




40 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


is square with God. You let America desecrate the 
Sabbath; you let America worship at the altar of 
gold; you let America continue her divorce evil; 
you let America continue her pursuit of lust, and 
if America forgets God, America’s star will set. 

Hear me, my countrymen; America can t beat 
the game of sin. Hear me, you bootlegger. Hear 
me, you man back there who buys liquor from the 
bootlegger, and then stands up and sings, My 
Country, ’Tis of Thee.” You dirty crook, you are 
not entitled to a country. You spit on the flag and 
trample on the constitution. You ought to be in 
the penitentiary. You would damn America to 
satisfy your damnable and depraved appetite. 

Hear me, you native born Americans who join 
with these degenerate foreigners in an effort to 
break down our Christian Sabbath. If these un¬ 
assimilated foreigners don’t like our Sabbath, let 
them take a boat back home. The boats run both 
ways, and these folks who are here for our loaves 
and fishes can go back to Russia or somewhere else. 
They talk about a “blue Sunday.” We don’t want 
a “blue Sunday,” but we want a red, white and 
blue Sunday. We want to preserve for our chil¬ 
dren the institutions that have made America the 
greatest country on God’s earth. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.” This text 
is true in the life of a local community. You citi¬ 
zens of this town, listen to me. If you want to 
build a city that will stand, you will have to write 
the name of God above your office building; over 
your bank doors; on the walls of your schoolrooms, 
and you must write the name of God on the hearts 
of your people. Your leading citizens can’t patron- 




YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


41 


ize bootleggers, play poker, and dance all night 
these damnable modern lustful dances without de¬ 
stroying the foundation of your municipal life. No 
man is a friend to his town who lives in sin, and 
turns his back on God. Brick and mortar, bank 
buildings, and skyscrapers don’t make a city that 
will abide. If you want to build right, build your 
city out of clean manhood and pure womanhood. 
No man is a true patriot who lives in sin, and refuses 
to render allegiance to God. The greatest asset 
this city has is the godly men and women who walk 
your streets and mingle with your people. Your 
town can’t beat the sin game, and you are fools 
to try. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.’’ This is 
true in the life of a family. You hear men talk 
about the skeleton in the family closets, but skele¬ 
tons are not so disgraceful as long as you can keep 
them in the closets. The trouble is this—skeletons 
won’t stay in closets forever. They break down 
those closet doors, and walk into the parlor, and 
dance on your parlor floor. Then these skeletons 
walk out the front door and go uptown and tell the 
people where they came from. 

I am talking to some father this afternoon who 
lives a sinful life before your children every day. 
You neglect your Christian duty. There is no 
family prayer at your house. Your example is all 
wrong. Your children have your number. They 
know you. You can’t pop a sham, crooked, life 
off on your child. The children will go you one 
better in sin. You stay away from church on 
Sunday night, and when the children grow up they 
will stay away from church morning and night. 



42 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


You swear, and the son will swear and tell dirty 
jokes. You break the prohibition law, and your 
children will lose respect for all law. Some day 
you will be paying your boy out of jail. Don’t 
blame anybody but yourself when the sad day 
comes. Take your medicine like a man. Remem¬ 
ber, you were the fool. You tried to beat the game 
of sin; but the sin game is unbeatable. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.” This text 
is true in the individual life. No man ever lived 
who could beat the game of sin. You can’t do 
wrong and get away with it. You think you can. 
Every human wreck on earth and in hell thought 
he could, too. These wrecks know better now. 
When you have made a mess of your life you will 
learn your lesson, too, but why not have some sense 
and learn your lesson before the tragic day of ruin 
and shame. Use your head, men. For God’s sake, 
think! Don’t play the fool. No man ever lived 
who was wise enough, shrewd enough, and enough 
of a genius to beat the game. You can’t do it. 
Don’t try it. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.’’ It is 
physically impossible for any man to beat the sin 
game. God made your body so sin will mark it. 
Your face is an index to your life. The gambler 
has a strange, restless eye which betrays him. I 
can pick you out in a crowd. You can’t conceal 
your sin. The serpent of lust crawls across your 
face, and leaves a slimy trail. If you are an adul¬ 
terer, the set of your jaw, the curl of your lip, and 
the depravity of your eye tell the story to observant 
men. 

The drunkard does not have to carry a placard 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


43 


with the words, “I’m a drunkard.’* Let him walk 
the street, and his bloated face and bloody eye will 
tell the story of his ruin. The fallen woman does 
not have to wear a scarlet letter on her breast to 
tell the world of her shame. Her faded face and sus¬ 
picious eye tell the story of her infamy. 

Men, God gave you a body that makes it impos¬ 
sible for you to beat the sin game. I am talking 
to men today who have trembling hands because of 
sin. Some of you have a skipping pulse because 
of sin. Some of you have aching joints because of 
sin, and some of you have a hard liver because 
of sin. 

A few years ago I spoke to men only, one Sun¬ 
day afternoon, in my home town, Montgomery, 
Alabama. When I was through my service I 
started out at the door and a young friend of mine, 
a minister, shook my hand. His hand was scorch¬ 
ing hot. 

“You’re sick,” I said. 

“Yes, I hardly know where 1 am,” he replied. 

I called a taxi and rushed him to my home and 
put him to bed. I ’phoned my family doctor, and 
when he came he took my friend’s temperature. 
The thermometer registered one hundred and five 
degrees. I stayed up all night, sponging him to 
keep his temperature down. The next day the 
physician brought a specialist out with him. The 
specialist began to thump his chest, and then he 
thumped in the region of his stomach. When he 
got to his liver, he said: 

“Did you ever drink?*’ 

“Doctor, before I was converted under Brother 




44 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


Jones’ ministry a few years ago, I was a beer 
drinker. I never drank much whiskey.” 

“I knew it,” said the doctor. ‘‘You drank enough 
to harden your old liver. We will get you up from 
here, but you may expect a return of these attacks.” 

What a shame for a man to go through life 
handicapped like that. Converted and in the serv¬ 
ice of God, but he will never do half of all he might 
have done, because when he was young he tried 
to beat the game of sin. 

A few years ago an old preacher, one of the 
famous old men of the South, wrote me a long 
letter, congratulating me on one of my meetings. 
He closed his letter with a statement like this : 

”1 am getting old and won’t be here much longer. 

1 am in bad shape physically. Most of my infirmi¬ 
ties are due to my early dissipation. God has been 
good to me. He saved me, and has used me in the 
ministry, but how I wish I had never dissipated 
before I was converted.” 

Young men, hear me. Every dissipation of 
youth must be paid for with a draft on your man¬ 
hood. If you are willing to pay, go on in your sin, 
but pay you must. You can’t beat the game. 

I thank God there is no alcohol in my blood. 
There is no gonococci (the germs of gonorrhoea) 
in my blood. There is no syphilitic germ in my 
blood, or in my spinal fluid. I praise God when He 
saves a drunkard, but He has been better to me 
than He ever was to a drunkard. He saved me 
before I became a drunkard. I praise Him when 
He saves a libertine, or a degenerate, but how good 
He was to save me before my manhood was cursed 






YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GAME 


45 


by disease and sin. Men, sin always leaves a man 
worse than it finds him. It is never a blessing, but 
always a curse. Remember, fellows, God says it: 
"Be sure your sin will find you out." 

"Be sure your sin will find you out." Sin does 
not only mark a sinner’s body, but sin puts its mark 
on the sinner’s brain. Materialistic psychologists 
have argued that the human brain secretes thought 
like the liver secretes bile, but we know better now. 
The brain is the instrument on which the mind 
plays. Your mind plays on your brain like a vio¬ 
linist plays on a violin. Not only so, but your 
brain is psychologically affected by vour thoughts. 
When you think, that thought walks across your 
brain and leaves its footprints like footprints in the 
sand. A thought plows a furrow in your brain like 
a furrow in the field. If you continue to think 
along a certain line, that furrow gets deeper and 
deeper, and it soon becomes almost impossible for 
vou to keep out of the furrow. Everv thought you 
have has a tendency to slip into the deepest furrow 
of your brain. Here is what I mean: You take a 
man who thinks of money most of the time. Trv 
to divert him. Get him to thinking of religion. He 
goes back to money. He thinks of religion, even, 
in the terms of dollars and cents. 

I am talking to some man whose god is his pas¬ 
sion. Impurity has plowed a furrow in his brain. 
It is almost impossible for him to get away from 
his lustful thoughts. He finds himself, even in 
an atmosphere of puritv thinking his adulterous 
thoughts. His brain is diseased. It ts filled with 
maggots of impurity. It is a nesting place for lust¬ 
ful birds. 




46 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


Some years ago I was conducting a revival in a 
Florida city. An old man one day asked me to go 
with him for a ride, and as we drove down a coun¬ 
try road, he said: 

“Brother Jones, tell the young men as you go 
over the country that I say no man can sin when 
he is young without paying the penalty in his old 
age. Don’t tell them who told you, but tell them 
what I say. When I was a young man I was ter¬ 
ribly bad about women. I would run after one 
woman until I got tired of her; then I would throw 
her over and take up with another. That is the way 
I lived for a number of years. At last I met my 
precious wife. She was a lovely, pure girl. I loved 
her from the first, and we became engaged. We 
married and settled down. Just after we were mar¬ 
ried I was converted and joined the church. I 
have been true to my wife, and have tried all the 
years to live a Christian life. I am now an old man. 
My children are all married and gone, and my wife 
and I are left alone in our old age. I know I won’t 
be here much longer, but I find my mind in my old 
age trying to chase the vile ideals of my youth. 
Brother Jones, tell the young men that impres¬ 
sions made on the mind are made to stay.** 

People used to think it was all right for young 
men to sow their wild oats, but we have learned in 
this scientific age the folly of such sowings. Go 
to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and you will find those 
poor devils out there reaping their wild oats. 

Not long ago a young man in one of our cities 
went into his room, turned the gun to his head, and 
blew out his brains. That gun was loaded with 
wild oats. 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


47 


Some years ago I was in a town of the South. I 
called at a hospital to see a doctor friend of mine. 
While we were sitting in the office talking, this doc¬ 
tor said: 

“Bob, did you ever know a certain man in such 
and such a community?** 

“Yes,** I replied; “I knew him well.** 

“What kind of a man was he?** the doctor asked. 

I told him I didn’t care to say. 

“Come on and tell me,** said he. 

“Doctor,** I said, “since you insist, I will tell you. 
He was the worst man after women I ever knew. 
That man has a string of bastard children all over 
the country.” 

“Bob, since you have told me that, I will tell 
you something,” the doctor said. ‘‘That man is 
dying in my hospital. He has a blood clot on his 
brain. I am going to take you into his room and 
show you an awful picture of human depravity. 
No nurse in this hospital will go into his room. 
They tried when he first came here, and he tried in 
his delirium to pull them into his bed, and almost 
tore their clothes off. We have to keep his wife 
out of his room to keep her from knowing his past 
life. He spends his time calling the names of his 
paramours, and begging them to get iii bed with 
him.** 

We went into the room, and I found a colored 
man on either side of the bed. I looked into the 
face of this poor, dying degenerate. I saw the death 
stare in his eye, and heard the death rattle in his 
throat. He seemed to be passing through awful 





48 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


agony. All at once he raised himself in bed, and 
with a look of lust in his staring eyes, he said: 

“Jane, come get in bed with me. Come on 
honey. I can’t wait. Come on; come on; come 
on!” 

The colored attendants tried to quiet him, and 
pulled him back to his pillow. 1 waited a few 
moments longer, and he raised up again and went 
through the same spasm of degeneracy. This time 
he called for some other imaginary prostitute. He 
must have had a dozen of these fits of perversity 
in fifteen minutes. My blood almost froze in my 
veins. I said, “What a fool a man is to sin. Here 
is a dying degenerate whose diseased brain reaches 
into the closets of his past and brings out of these 
closets the skeletons and dangles them in the faces 
of those who watch him die.” As I walked away 
from the room I said: “It is true no man can do 
wrong and get away with it.’ 

Boys, you can’t beat the game. Your brain 
won’t let you. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.’’ Sin does 
not only damn you, body and brain, but your sin 
will curse your children. After you are dead and 
in hell, your children will expose your shame to 
the next generation. It is absolutely true that the 
iniquities of the father are visited upon the chil¬ 
dren, even unto the fourth generation. Someone 
has said the reason the iniquities are not visited to 
the fifth generation is because there is no fifth 
generation in the family of a sinner. In other 
words, sin wipes out a family before the fifth gen¬ 
eration is born. 






YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


49 


My friend, Doctor Broughton, the great Baptist 
minister, told me this story: 

“Years ago, when I was practicing medicine, a 
fine looking young man, who had passed a splen¬ 
did examination in his books, came before me for 
a physical examination. He had been recom¬ 
mended for admission to the United States Naval 
Academy. I went over him carefully. Until I 
came to his teeth he showed up fine. While I was 
looking at his teeth, he said, ‘Dr. Broughton, are you 
going to recommend me?’ 

“I will let you know later,” I replied. 

“ ‘Come on, doctor; I am no baby. I want to 
know.* 

“After he insisted and practically demanded it, 
I told him I could not recommend him. He de¬ 
manded that I give my reason, and I told him his 
teeth indicated that he had syphilitic blood in him. 
He flared up and said: ‘That is a lie; you can’t 
reflect on my mother and father. I won’t stand it.’ 
I explained to him that I was not reflecting on his 
parents, but that the taint might come down to him 
from two or three generations past. He went 
home, and in a few days I had a letter from his 
father threatening to sue me. I wrote him to go 
on with his suit; that I would stand on my position. 
I heard no more from him. 

“Years later I preached one Sunday morning in 
my pulpit in Atlanta, and at the close of my service 
a young man with stooped shoulders, a hectic flush, 
and an awful cough, came up and shook my hand. 
I saw tears in his eyes as he said: 

“Doctor Broughton, do you know me?” 




50 


YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GAME 


“I told him 1 could not recognize him. 

Tm the young man you could not recommend 
to the naval academy. You were right, doctor. 
Dad is dead, and I have learned that he had syphilis 
when he was young. I have consumption, and am 
going west to die, but I thought I would come by 
and ask } 7 ou to forgive me for all the mean things 
1 thought about you,and the mean things I said to 
you.’ ” 

Hear me, men; you can’t beat the sin game. 
You are a big fool to try it. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out. Sin finds 
the sinner out because sin always sooner or later 
produces recklessness. You may stay conservative 
for a while, but later you will get a little more 
daring, a little more venturesome, and then you 
expose yourself by your own reckless abandon of 
yourself to your sin. 

There is a man here today who is coming under 
the power of drink. He thinks he is able to con¬ 
trol himself, and would resent any insinuation that 
he is a slave to the appetite. All right, my man; 
go on and see what will be the outcome. Some 
day you will find yourself under the influence of 
drink. You will slip home by way of the back 
alley, and hide with shame from the eyes of your 
friends. Next day, wondering if your friends 
know, you will fear to go to your business, and 
will blush to look into the eyes of those you meet 
on the street. All right, my man; go on and take 
your drink. In a few years you will not slip home 
by way of the back alley; you will reel and stagger 
down the main street of the town, and reaching 






YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


51 


your own gate you will fall and wallow like a dog 
in your own vomit. 

I am talking to some man now who is invading 
the sanctity of some man’s home. As you slip to 
see that woman you say: 

T am never going to take any chances. I must 
be careful. This business is dangerous.” 

You will not stay careful, but you will get a little 
more daring, a little bolder, and take greater and 
greater chances until some day her husband will 
empty a load of buckshot into your body. 

No man, except he be a fool, would ever run 
around with another man’s wife. 

Several years ago I was conducting a meeting 
in an Alabama city, and one day I gave this message 
to men. The next day a prominent society woman 
called at the hotel to see me. I went to the parlor 
to see this lady. She said: 

“Mr. Jones, there is a prominent man in this 
town, Mr. Blank. He and I have been in love with 
each other for several years. Of course I have a 
husband, and he has a wife, but we have been slip¬ 
ping off to Birmingham and other places, and we 
have lived like man and wife. He called me over 
the ’phone after your men’s meeting yesterday, and 
told me about the sermon. He said: 

“ T have just heard Bob Jones preach a sermon 
on the subject, “You can’t do wrong and get away 
with it.” He says sin produces recklessness, and 
he is right. You and I have taken awful chances, 
and I have called you to tell you I am done.’ 

“I told him I wanted to see him, and he said: 

*' ‘You are as close to me as you will ever get.' ” 



52 


YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GAME 


That daring, degenerate woman looked into my 
face and said: 

“He must see me. 1 had rather go to hell than 
give him up.” 

1 said to myself: that boy is caught in the devil s 
trap. God pity the poor fool who takes such awful 
chances in sin. 

Men, you can’t do wrong and get away with it. 
Let me tell you another story: 

A few years ago I was conducting a meeting in 
a western city. Night after night a man and woman 
came into the meeting together. The man was 
about the “bummiest” bum I ever saw. His clothes 
were ragged and filthy. The woman was a regular 
hag. She had only one arm, and her vile, filthy 
body was clothed with a patched and dirty dress. 

One night we had the high school in a body. 
There must have been a thousand of the young 
folks in the delegation. A handsome young man 
(I think he was president of the graduating class) 
came to the platform to lead a high school song. I 
was impressed with the manly and refined bearing 
of the young fellow. While he was leading the 
song a friend said: 

“Do you see that fine looking boy? Well, you 
will be surprised when I tell you that the old bum 
sitting by the side of that old hag is his father.” I 
asked how it could be. 

“That man,” replied my friend, “was, a few 
years ago, one of the leading men of this city. That 
woman was a social queen. They lived in the same 
neighborhood, and moved in the same social circle. 
One day people began to whisper that there was 





YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


53 


something suspicious, and later they stopped whis¬ 
pering and began to talk out loud. The man’s wife 
sued for a divorce, and the woman’s husband kicked 
her out of the house and got a divorce. That 
old degenerate and that depraved woman took up 
together, and ever since have lived like brutes. 
They have been in jail dozens of times. They get 
drunk and wallow in the wagon yards in each 
other’s arms. A few weeks ago they were down 
the railroad track, drunk as dogs. They were sleep¬ 
ing, and had as their pillow the steel rails. The 
express train came around the curve, and he, half 
awake, rolled over and tried to pull her off the 
track, but she left her arm on the rail and the train 
cut it off.” 

1 said to myself: With an example like that there 
are still men in this town who think they can beat 
the game of sin. 

In a vaudeville theatre of a certain city there was 
a man who had a boa constrictor snake, which he 
had raised from babyhood. He would come out in 
front of the footlights and say: 

‘‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want you to get 
excited. Over in this rustic corner is a large snake, 
but he is harmless. I caught him when he was a 
baby and he minds my every word. 1 will give a 
signal, and he will come out here in front of the 
footlights; then, when I give another signal he will 
wrap himself about my body, but in a moment he 
will uncoil and go back to his rustic corner.” 

The signal was given, but the snake did not 
move. The performer repeated the signal several 
times, and at last the snake began slowly to drag 
its slimy way across the stage. It stopped in front 




54 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


of the footlights, and the audience shuddered. A 
moment later when the actor tried to get the snake 
to come to him the crowd had the feeling that the 
man had lost control of his pet. After a strenuous 
effort the man brought the snake to him. It slowly 
wrapped itself around his form. Oh, horrors, the 
snake is stretching itself! Bones crash, and the poor 
man falls in a lifeless heap. 

Fellows, you can’t do wrong and get away with 
it. Your baby snake of sin will grow, and some day 
the sin you think you can control will master you. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out. You can t 
do wrong and get away with it because you have a 
conscience. Conscience never dies. It may sleep, 
but it doesn’t die. You may think your conscience 
is dead, but some day it will come back to the throne 
of your soul, and draw the curtain which hangs 
over your past, and will point an accusing finger 
to those acts of sin. The finger of your conscience 
will draw a picture of your old mother’s face, and 
your conscience will say: 

“You pinched that wrinkle. Your sin did it. 
You are the guilty one. Don t you sleep tonight. 
You stay awake and remember all the pain your sin 
caused a poor mother.’’ 

There is a man listening to me now who a few 
years ago led a girl astray. You won her love, and 
little by little you wormed yourself into her confi¬ 
dence. Then when her face was tear stained you led 
her into sin and shame. You robbed her of the most 
priceless jewel a woman possesses—her virtue. 
Conscience won’t let you forget. Some day your 
conscience with a pen of fire will paint a picture 
of that tear «tained face on the wall of your 







YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


55 


memory. You may forget for a while, for con¬ 
science may be sleeping, but wait until your con¬ 
science awakens. God will see to it. You can’t 
do wrong and get away with it. 

Dwight L. Moody tells a story about conscience: 

“Years ago,” he said, “when I was a little boy 
working on a farm up in New England, an old man 
whom we had hired to help in the field, hoed out 
to the end of the row with me. He began to hit 
his hoe on a rock as he said: 

“ ‘Dwight, when I was a boy like you I went 
away from home. When I kissed my mother good¬ 
bye she gave me a little Bible, and I opened it to 
find that she had written on the fly leaf: “Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you.” I went 
to the city to look for a job. I didn’t find anything 
to do in the city before Sunday came. Sunday 
morning I decided to go to church. I sat through 
the preliminaries thinking about my mother and the 
verse she wrote in my little Bible. After a while 
the preacher arose and as he took his text he seemed 
to be looking at me as he said: 

“ ‘Friends, I believe the Lord is leading me this 
morning in the selection of a text. I call your atten¬ 
tion to these words: “Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God and His righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you.” 

“ ‘I sat there in agony until the service was over, 
and when I walked out of the church I said to 
myself: 

“ ‘I won’t stay in this town. I hate it. I left 
the next morning, and found a job in another city. 




56 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


When Sunday came I argued with myself about 
whether I would go to church. I didn’t want to go, 
but I thought of my old mother and the Bible she 
gave me, and the words she wrote in the little Bible, 
so I decided to go to the morning service. As 1 
walked toward the church 1 kept saying over and 
over: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you.” 

“ ‘I sat through the preliminaries in great agony 
of spirit. At last the preacher, a saintly looking 
man, arose in the pulpit to deliver his sermon. 

“ ‘My friends, he began, I feel led to preach this 
morning from the text: “Seek ye first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you.” 

“ ‘By the time he finished his text I had my hat 
in my hand, and was on my way out of the church, 
saying to myself: “Oh, God, I can’t stand to hear 
another sermon on that text.’’ 

“ ‘1 went to an old cemetery, and sat down by a 
grave. I sat there for over an hour, and said over 
and over again: “I will not surrender to God.*’ 

“ ‘Dwight, God left me there at that grave. He 
has never called me again.’ 

“I did not understand the old man then,’* said 
Mr. Moody, “as I was not a Christian, but a few 
years later I went away to the city myself, and in a 
short time was converted. After my conversion I 
wrote my mother and asked her what had become 
of our old friend. She wrote me that the poor old 
fellow had lost his mind, and had been sent away 
to the insane asylum. When I went home I went to 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


57 


the asylum to see him. 1 found him in his cell. 
His hair was long and gray. His beard was hang¬ 
ing to his waist, and was as white as snow. He 
was walking up and down in that narrow cell. 

“ ‘How is my old friend?’ I asked. 

“The old man turned his piercing, sunken eyes 
toward me, and stretching forth his long bony 
fingers he pointed toward me and said solemnly: 

“ ‘Young man, young man, seek ye first the king¬ 
dom of God and His righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto you.’ 

I spoke to him again, and, his voice rising to a 
scream, he cried: 

“ ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you.’ Everything else was gone. Conscience 
had driven him mad. 

“Some time later I came home, and again I said: 

“ ‘Mother, what has become of our old friend?’ 

“ ‘They brought him home the other day, but he 
is a helpless imbecile,’ mother replied. 

“1 went over to his cottage. He was sitting in a 
rocking chair on his front porch; his hair and beard 
were longer and whiter than ever, and the only 
answer I could get to my question, ‘Do you remem¬ 
ber me,’ was: 

“ ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
rightousness, and all these things shall be added 
unto you.’ ’* 

Men, you can’t do wrong and get away with it. 
Conscience won’t let you beat the sin game. 

“Be sure your sin will find you out.’’ Even if 




58 


YOU CAN’T BEAT THE GAME 


you could escape the penalty of sin in this world, 
which you cannot do, you must meet your sin at 
God’s judgment bar. 

“So then every one of us must give an account 
of himself to God.” 

That is the awful statement of Holy Writ. You 
can’t pop a sham life on God. Judgment day is 
coming. 

It has been argued by some that every word a 
man speaks sets into vibration waves in the air 
and ether, and a million years from today, if our 
sense of hearing is acute enough, we can stand on 
the rocks of world’s rolling on the outskirts of 
creation, and listen again to every word we ever 
uttered in this life. 

The modern radio brings a solemn hush to my 
heart. Today we are actually talking across con¬ 
tinents, and across seas. 

I used to read in the Bible about the morning 
stars singing together, and I would say to myself, 
“Stars cannot sing.” I am not sure, since the dis¬ 
covery of the radio, that they do not sing. For all 
we know, the entire universe may be filled with 
music which our ears have never heard. Sound 
is immortal. You will stand at the judgment, and 
every word you have ever uttered from the first 
wail of infancy to the last sight of old age will 
come home to you on the wings of the wind, and 
the folding pages of the tempest. How will you 
feel in the day of judgment to hear again every 
oath you ever swore; every lustful word you ever 
whispered into a woman’s ear, and all the slimy 
jokes you have told? You will have that experience 
some day. 





YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


59 


The most thrilling invention in the world to me 
is the moving picture machine. A man turns a 
machine, and gets every expression of the face. 
The smile, the tear, the look of anger and passion, 
all are recorded. It is possible for man by his in¬ 
ventive genius to focus a moving picture machine 
on the birth of a baby, and to keep the machine 
focused on that baby throughout its life, and to 
actually preserve every act of the life, and to pre¬ 
serve that life forever. If man can do this, don’t 
you think God can keep the record of a life until 
judgment day? Fie can, and He will. I have tried 
to imagine that somewhere beyond the stars, God 
has placed His machine, and the hand of angels 
turn that machine to make a record of every life. 

Years ago one night your dear old mother said 
to your father: 

“I believe the time has come, for I am in pain.” 

The anxious father called the family doctor. 
There were those hours of terrible torment as your 
mother sank into the “valley of the shadow” to 
bring you into the world. The angel kept turning 
the machine to keep forever the record of your 
birth. The loving, gentle, sympathetic face of your 
father; the face of the fine old doctor, as he tried 
by his every expression to keep up the courage of 
both mother and father; the bright but sympathetic 
face of the nurse, and the agonizing but courageous 
face of your precious mother, all have been pre¬ 
served by God’s machine. 

There are other pictures, too. One day there 
was the first tooth. Mother found it, and told 
father. They both felt for the tooth while angels 
watched from heaven. Then the first little totter- 




60 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


ing step; the animated face of father, and the 
radiant smile of mother. All of these were taken 
for God’s baby book up in heaven. One day in 
your babyhood purity you chased the butterfly in 
the yard among the flowers. Angels beckoned to 
other angels to see you in the splendor of your in- 
nocency while they made the picture. One day 
with a little book under your arm, and a little basket 
in your hand, you started to school. Mother’s eyes 
filled with tears, as she told father: “We haven’t 
a baby any more.’’ The angels made the picture. 

You can remember the vile things that took place 
in the days of your youth. Some men listening to 
me now did not stop your depravity in your youth. 
Some of you have carried your dissipation even into 
your married life. Some of you have broken your 
married vows, but why mention that, as the angel 
made the record. 

It is judgment day. God says to the angels: 

“Let the curtain fall,” and down the curtain 
comes. God says to the angels: 

“Turn on the picture,” and the angels turn on 
the picture. You will stand among earth’s teeming 
millions, and your record from the bed of your birth 
until the last breath in your bed of death will be 
reproduced before the eyes of the human race. 
Remember, men, you can’t do wrong and get away 
with it, for there is a judgment day. 

I have drawn a dark picture, but it is no darker 
than God draws it. Hear His word: 

“Be sure j^our s i n will find you out.” “Whatso¬ 
ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “The 
wages of sin is death.” “The wicked shall be turned 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


61 


into hell with all the nations that forget God.” 
“There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked.” 

It is a dark cloud cast by sin, but before I finish 
this message I am going to hang a rainbow of hope 
over this cloud. Your sin will find you out. There 
is no way to escape this. But blessed be God 1 
don’t have to carry my load of sin to the judgment 
day. Jesus Christ knows what to do with sin. He 
will remove it as far as the East is from the West. 
He will put it in the bottom of the sea. He will 
put it behind His back. That means He will put 
it where He can’t even see it. He will remember it 
against us no more forever. That means He will 
never remind us of our wrongdoing. Blessed be 
God for such a Savior. 

The saving grace of Jesus does not change the 
law of God; which is true forevermore. “Be sure 
your sin will find you out.” That stands. That is 
irrevokable. You get drunk, and get in a fight 
and lose your eye. Becoming a Christian won t 
give you a new eye, but it will take the sin of 
drunkenness off your soul. You go out and de¬ 
bauch your manhood with a fallen woman, and 
become diseased. Becoming a Christian won t cure 
your disease, but it will take the stain of lust off 
your soul. That is the gospel. It is bad enough 
to cany our penalty on earth, but thank God, He in 
His own way shelters us in the judgment. The 
Bible says something about our being hid with 
Christ in God. No storm of judgment can reach 
us there. 

A few years ago a man took charge of a country 
school in a mountain community of the South. It 
was a school where no teacher had ever been able 



62 


YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


to enforce discipline. The first morning the teacher 
wrote ten rules on the blackboard, and after every 
rule he wrote the penalty. There was a little orphan 
boy who came to the school. Winter and summer, 
rain and shine, hot and cold, he always wore his 
coat buttoned tight about his little body. In his 
coat collar there were two little rusty safety pins, 
which bound the collar about his neck. He was a 
manly little chap, and though the other boys laughed 
at him about the way he dressed, he studiously 
went on with his work. One day he violated one 
of the rules. The penalty was ten lashes with his 
coat off. 

“Come to the front and take off your coat,*’ said 
the teacher. 

“Teacher don’t make me take my coat off.” 

“Are you guilty?” asked the teacher. 

“Yes, I’m guilty.” 

“Well, take your coat off.” 

“Teacher, I don’t mind the licking, but please 
don’t make me take my coat off.” 

Take your coat off,” the teacher snapped. 

“Teacher, please wait a moment. I can’t explain, 
but if you won t make me take off my coat you can 
hit me twenty times instead of ten.” 

“You take your coat off, sir.” 

Just a moment, teacher. I will do as you say, 
but if you won’t make me take my coat off you can 
hit me as many times as you like.” 

“Take your coat off at once,” thundered the 
teacher. 

“All right, teacher, but you don’t understand.” 



YOU CANT BEAT THE GAME 


63 


He began to slowly unbutton his coat. At last 
he got to the rusty safety pins, and he worked and 
worked to get them unfastened. He slowly pulled 
off his coat. His little back was naked. He didn’t 
own a shirt. He turned his little naked back to the 
teacher. The teacher looked down as if he was 
debating in his mind whether to whip him. Back 
there in the school room sat a manly little fellow. 
Quick as a flash he was up at the front with his 
coat off, and he turned his own back to the teacher 
with a cry of: 

“Teacher! don’t hit that kid. Let me take the 
licking for him.’’ 

Men, one time my back was bare, and the lashes 
of God’s justice were about to fall, but Jesus bared 
his back and took the whipping for me, and with 
His stripes I am healed. I love Him this afternoon. 
He can have anything 1 have. If there was one drop 
of blood in my veins that didn’t flow in loyalty to 
Him I would call one of these doctors to the plat¬ 
form and ask him to take his knife and open the 
vein and let out that drop of blood. 

Men, your sin has found you out. Some of you 
are here with bodies marked with sin. Some of you 
are cursed with diseased brains. Some of you have 
lived to see your own children damned. Some of 
you have lived reckless lives. Many of you are tor¬ 
mented with a troubled conscience. Jesus can save 
you. Come to Him this afternoon. 


















































